Metropol Parasol, an immense mushroom-like grid structure that hovers over Plaza de La Encarnacion in the old quarter, houses a museum, bars and restaurants. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Food and flamboyance in the Andalusian capital. Charly Wilder reports.

You don't have to spend long in Seville to see why so many operas have been set there. A sense of drama pervades the Andalusian capital, from its Moorish royal palaces and extravagant Catholic festivals to the way the strum of a guitar tends to send a whole room into syncopated clapping.

Maybe it's this penchant for pomp that keeps the city dynamic in lean times. At contemporary shops, restaurants and arts spaces that continue to open among Seville's tangle of narrow stone alleyways, a friendly localism seems to rule the day.

Under the grid

Seville has been home to several high-profile architectural projects in the last decade, but none has gotten more attention than the Metropol Parasol, an immense mushroom-like grid structure designed by the German architect Jurgen Mayer-Hermann that hovers over Plaza de La Encarnacion in the old quarter.

It was completed in 2011 after considerable public controversy over design, location, delays and cost overruns. The structure includes an archaeological museum, bars, restaurants and a balcony with a panoramic view of the city center - a great place to get one's bearings.

Double vintage

Youth unemployment may be sky-high in Seville, but many of the city's most interesting new openings cater to its younger residents. Red House Art & Food, a combination bar, restaurant, performance space and gallery, opened in a former storage facility in late 2012.

There, the city's gainfully unemployed sip espressos on midcentury sofas and read under retro-futuristic, '60s light fixtures, all of which are for sale. Down the street, Wabi Sabi, a smartly curated shop and gallery opened by the Seville-bred graphic designer Maria Lopez Vergara in November 2011, takes a more upmarket approach to repurposing.

You'll find everything from lamps made from vintage soda bottles and collage works by local artists to a 1920s French Art Deco table carved from oak root for 2,100 euros ($2,902).